The 113-year-old Southwest Exposition and Livestock Show, referred to by Fort Worth locals as the “Stock Show,” has been home to several significant “firsts.” The list includes the first indoor rodeo; the first cutting competition held under lights; and the first organizational meeting of the National Cutting Horse Association.

In addition, Wimpy P-1 earned his right to the #1 spot in the registry of the American Quarter Horse Association during the Fort Worth Stock Show.

Organized by owners of the Fort Worth Stockyards Company, the first Southwest Exposition and Livestock Show was held in 1898, under shade trees near the city’s north side stockyards district, where cattle drovers had rested their herds in the late 1800s.

The show continued to be held outside (although tents were added in 1899), until the North Side Coliseum, billed as the “most opulent and dynamic livestock pavilion in the Western Hemisphere,” was dedicated in 1908.

President Woodrow Wilson launched a much heralded evening performance of the 1913 Stock Show, when he pushed a button in the White House that “turned on” electric lights in Fort Worth’s North Side Coliseum. This was at a time when most rural American homes did not have electricity.

Wild West exhibitions were held during the 1916 and 1917 Stock Shows, but in 1918, officials inaugurated a contest format for cowboys and cowgirls and called it a “rodeo.” The contest events weren’t new, but this was the first time that they had ever been organized as a “rodeo,” rather than a round-up, stampede, or cowboy reunion.

Later, at the 1938 Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, the Turtles, a cowboy association that gave rise to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), established an official list of rodeo events: bareback riding; calf roping; saddle bronc riding, bull dogging; and steer (or bull) riding.

Two other important “firsts’ came to the Fort Worth Stock Show through live broadcasting. In 1932, the show’s rodeo became the first to be broadcast live, through NBC’s Fort Worth affiliate WBAP. And in 1958, the Fort Worth Stock Show Rodeo became the first to receive complete live national television coverage, when guest stars Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were hosts on NBC-TV.

This year’s Fort Worth Livestock Show and Rodeo runs through February 5.